ZEELAND, MI – Some residents of a Zeeland neighborhood are up in arms over flooding issues in their basements – a problem many of them say wasn’t an issue before two road construction projects in the last four years.

About two dozen residents in the area of Division Street and Central Avenue turned out for a public meeting on Tuesday, May 7 at the Howard Miller Community Center, one night after many of those same residents expressed their frustrations to the City Council.

For Amber Snyder, a Central Avenue resident and child care provider, the basement flooding was a problem even before the April 19 rainstorm that dumped more than 3 inches of rain in the area. She says the construction last year on Division, from Main Avenue to Rich Street, raised the water table in her neighborhood.

“I now depend on a submersible pump to remove about 3 inches of water per day from my utility room,” Snyder said. “My washing machine, dryer, freezer and furnace have all been sitting in water for seven weeks.”

Snyder, a single mother of six, says the flooding has caused substantial damage to the baseboards, doors, study walls, tile and concrete floors, and that mildew is becoming a problem. Her daughter, a senior at Zeeland East High School, moved out of the house after her bedroom was flooded and the young woman now lives with Snyder’s parents.

Some neighborhood residents say the problem with water seeping into basements dates back to 2009, when Central Avenue was rebuilt from Maple Avenue to Fairview Road, and was exacerbated further by the Division Street project. They say time is of the essence in getting the flooding problem addressed.

“We don’t need a subcommittee, we need a fix,” said Susan VandenBeldt, a 25-year resident of Zeeland and former planning commissioner who surveyed her neighbors to get a handle on the extent of the flooding.

City officials and the city’s consulting engineer, Moore and Bruggink, are withholding judgment on the cause of the problem. City Manager Tim Klunder pointed out that a few residents in the affected area aren’t seeing any flooding problems while their neighbors continue to pump out their basements.

“It is not a quick cause and effect,” Klunder said. “We need to go through this process (to figure out why this is happening), and get what the cause is, what the effect is.”

Bob Bruggink, president of Moore and Bruggink, says he’s “very confident in the design that was done” on the road projects.

City officials hope to bring in a hydrologist to take a look at the situation during a City Council study session May 20.